A Word About Strikes

Published:PravdaNo. 27, February 2, 1913.

      Signed:I..

      Published according to thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1975],

      Moscow,Volume 18,

      pages541-542.Translated:Stepan ApresyanTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Luchhas carried a number of articles against mass
strikes. It is obvious that we cannot reply toLuchhere in the
way it deserves.

Weshall limit ourselves to a few purely theoretical comments on thenatureof the arguments ofLuch. Those who write forLuchand who diligently cite examples from Western countries,
repeating the catchword “anarcho-syndicalism” and so on in a thousand
variations, thereby betray their complete incomprehension of the historical
peculiarity of the strikes in Russia in 1912.

Nowherein Europe have strikes in the twentieth century had, and
nowhere do they have or can they have, such importance as in the Russia of
the period we are passing through. Why?

Forthe simple reason that while the period of radical democratic
changes has long been absolutely over through out Europe, in Russia it is
just such changes that are on the order of the day—in the historical
sense of the phrase.

Hencethe nation-wide character of the economic, and still more of the
non-economic, strikes in Russia. Strikes in Europe, where they herald
entirely different changes,do not possesssuch a nation-wide
character (from the stand point of democratic changes in the
country). Moreover, the relation between the strikes in Russia and the
position of the agricultural small producers (peasants) is quite unlike
what it is in the Western countries.

Puttingall this together, we shall see that the arguments ofLuchleave out of account precisely the national, democratic
significance of the economic and non-economic strikes in the Russia of
1912. The most important and historicallydistinctive feature of our strikes is the fact that the proletariat comes
forward as the leaderdespitethe anti-democratic sentiments of
the liberals. And it is just this that theLuchwriters do not
understand, and cannot understand from their liquidationist standpoint.

Ofcourse, the point is not at all to appraise the advisability of any
particular strike. It is not at all that the most methodical preparations
are necessary and sometimes even the replacement of a strike by an action
ofthe same kind. The point is the liquidators’generalincomprehension ofthis particularsignificance of strikes in
general which makes the slogan of “freedom of association” or of an
“open party” unsuitable, out of keeping with the existing situation.

Whatthe liquidators see as a disadvantage is the entire character of
the movement and not particular cases, while the Marxists and all
class-conscious workers see it as an advantage. That is why the workers
have been incensed, and continue to be incensed, byLuch’spropaganda.